


drift compatible

by synapses



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pacific Rim, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, F/M, SO MUCH FLUFF, dude i'm so emo about this one, i love pacific rim i'm a nightmare, i'm like actually proud of this one and it's so tender it made me cry, imagine soulmates but like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-03-02 12:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18811327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synapses/pseuds/synapses
Summary: “Our hearts are beating together, you know,” Steve says against the curve of your ear. “I can feel it.” Somehow, you know he’s smiling.Yours skips a beat in wonder. “Did you know?”“That it was going to be like this? No.”**THE PACIFIC RIM AU THAT NO ONE ASKED FOR





	1. drift compatible

**Author's Note:**

> so I’m trash and fascinated by the concept of drift compatibility from pacific rim and it would not get out of my brain anyways imagine if you and steve could see into each other’s souls

“You have got to be kidding me.” Your face is screwed up in fury. “Shadow Triumph is _mine_. I’m not going to let Rogers take her away from me just because his last pilot couldn’t stand to be around him.” 

You’re standing in the Anchorage Shatterdome (also known as “The Icebox”), the Jaeger headquarters in the middle of freezing fucking nowhere, pleading with your CO to let you keep the only career that’s made your life meaningful—piloting giant robots to rid your world of the greatest threat it’s ever faced. All around you, the crew is preparing Jaegers to be airlifted out of the base, or dropped in the water. The hanger is a beehive of activity; all you can do is stand there, frozen, while Kaiju threats are reported in from San Francisco and Vancouver. 

Sara—your copilot, your best friend, the person you know like the other half of your soul—had stepped down after your last mission. She had a husband, and anticipated the possibility of having a child on the way. The risk had been too big. 

You had known what she was going to do before she tendered her resignation. Had drifted together so many times that you understood her hopes and her dreams, as well as her deepest, most private fears. You would sometimes catch glimpses of her memories in your dreams. So you knew that once she and Charlie got married it would be the beginning of the end. That while she would do anything to protect the innocent, she would go to the ends of the earth to protect her new family. 

So you sent her off with a cake, tears trickling down both your cheeks, and whispered in her ear, “Congratulations on the baby.” She had reddened, shocked that you had figured it out, then laughed. 

“No matter what happens, it’s you and me,” she had said, holding you tightly in her arms as you said your final good byes. “Even after you find another copilot.” You had sniffled through your tears at that. 

“And don’t let them sucker you into replacing me with some loser. When you know, you’ll know that it’s right,” she added. And then she left, heading far, far inland, to somewhere in middle America where the Kaiju couldn’t reach. 

You jog yourself out of the memory and focus on what Fury is saying. “Rogers is a captain. He outranks you. And it seems like his last partner Rumlow is connected in some pretty high places, so Rogers is taking Triumph and leaving Rumlow with their old junker.” 

You feel your face crumple for the second time in only a few months, but you hold back the tears, unwilling to let Fury see even a trickle of moisture in your eyes. 

“You’ll take the compatibility test and spar together, just like any other candidate.” You understand that Fury is offering you a lifeline, another chance to be a pilot. If out of the hundreds of other candidates waiting to be tapped, you’re the one who connects the most with Rogers (fat chance), you’ll be able to keep your Jaeger. If not, well…you don’t know what you’re going to do. 

You know that you would never be jettisoned off to some meaningless officer position, being offered a few medals in exchange for living out the rest of your life at some obscure desk pushing paper. Jaeger pilots are too valuable for that. 

But you also realize that if Steve Rogers wants your robot (the latest and greatest Stark creation, superior in every way possible) he’s going to get it. And since there’s no way you’ll be drift compatible with the Captain, you’ll be on reserve—pilot hell. Eventually reserve pilots try to seek out the adrenaline that they’ve chased for years in a 288-foot robot somewhere else. It never ends well. 

“Respectfully, sir, I’d like to take myself out of the running. Rogers and I are never going to be compatible. He’s too reckless. He doesn’t know the _meaning_ of a cost-benefit analysis,” you say, convinced. 

Fury merely gives you an implacable stare, like he knows something that you don’t. “Report to Combat at 0800 tomorrow morning. And don’t you have classes to teach?” 

You had been an evolutionary biologist before the Kaiju came. After the first few attacks, the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps had knocked on your door. They’d thought you could offer a valuable perspective on the monsters’ morphology, calculate their weak spots in the field. After some neural scans, they’d discovered that you were one of the rare few that could drift. Your graduation from the rigorous pilot training program hadn’t stopped them from making use of your teaching skills, though. 

Since Sara had left, you’d been furloughed at the Shatterdome, waiting for a new copilot and an assignment. When Fury had asked you to train cadets, you’d jumped on the chance for something to do. 

You’re sure regretting it now. “Can anyone tell me what drifting is?” 

A hand shoots up. A girl in the front row, adjusting her horn-rimmed glasses on her nose. “A drift, or a neural handshake, is a mental connection between two pilots that allows them to control a Jaeger, because the strain of piloting one alone is impossible for one person’s brain to handle.” 

“Excellent, Katrina. And how do we know if two pilots are capable of forming this connection?” Another hand. You nod at the cadet. “All right, JFK, go for it if you must.”

“The only requirement is that you can think similarly and connect with one another. That’s why so many pairs are close friends, or siblings, or parent and child, or sometimes lovers. It’s like having a soul mate. It can be platonic. Or not.” He shoots a grin at the girl sitting next to him. You roll your eyes. 

“Correct. Now, what happens during a drift?” The class is silent. “Anyone?” You see them shift in their seats uncomfortably. 

“I can see from your faces that you know the answer. And the answer is, you _share_.” You start to warm up to your topic. “You share everything. Memories, thoughts, embarrassing sexual experiences. And the number one thing that you cannot do is concentrate on those memories, or fixate on a thought, or feel embarrassment, or you’ll get lost. You’ll chase Random Access Brain Impulse Triggers—what we call R.A.B.I.T.s—until someone forces you out of the drift or until you go insane.”

The cadets look nervous now. Good. They should be. Drifts are wonderful, with the right partner. If you know what you’re doing, it’s comforting to lose yourself in the synchronicity of the fight, become one with your copilot until you’re no longer two people but one machine. But they should remember that an incompatible drift could mean death. 

You leave the sentence hanging in the air for a moment, then move on. “Knowing that, what is the one thing that you and your partner must do in order to pilot a Jaeger?” 

Again, the class is silent, but this time it’s because they’re turning in their seats, eyes fixed on the door. A voice rings out from the back of the classroom. “Trust each other. Unconditionally.” 

Captain Rogers is standing in the doorway. He’s in street clothes—brown leather jacket, plaid button-down, jeans. His hair is long, like he hasn’t had time to cut it, and the beard is new to you but long enough to require trimming. He’s holding a carry-on bag in his hand, as if he’s come straight here before setting it down in his quarters. You can’t say you didn’t expect him to stop by—his sense of morality wouldn’t have allowed him to take your robot without talking to you first—but you can’t imagine it’s going to be a pleasant conversation. 

“And with that, we’ve finished our lecture for today. I’ll see you all on Wednesday,” you say, cutting your lesson short. The kids file out of the classroom, one by one, staring at Rogers with admiring eyes, and you lean against your desk, waiting for him to speak. 

“Look, I could say that I’m really sorry about this—“

“Yes, you could,” you interject, arms crossed over your chest. 

“—but I know that you don’t really want to hear it,” he finishes. “Triumph was the best of my options, and I had to take it.” 

You aren’t convinced by his reasoning. “If you’re just here to offer weak justifications for taking my Jaeger, then you can be on your way out. If you’re going to say anything important, then say it. Now.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose in annoyance; you feel a brief twinge of satisfaction. “I came here to beg you to take the test, at least. You’re the best pilot we have. The others wouldn’t know the head of a Kaiju from its ass.” 

You stifle a laugh, trying to maintain an impassive façade. “Rogers, we’re not compatible. I know that, and you know that. When we were in school together, no one would have dreamed of pairing us up.”

“That was ten years ago,” he says, smiling like he knows something that you don’t. “I doubt either of us are the same as we were then.”

“I’ve seen the tapes, Steve. You fight with your heart, and I fight with my head. I take calculated risks, and you charge into danger like a raging bull. We’re fundamentally different. There’s no chance I’m going to be able to drift with you.” 

“If you say so.” He shakes his head, giving up and rising from the desk where he’s been sitting. He makes his way out of the classroom in long, even strides. At the threshold, he stops and says, “You know, the only way to prove me wrong is to take the test.”

Fifteen minutes later, you’re sitting in a chair in the laboratory as the techs affix electrodes to your forehead. They drill you with series after series of questions, noting which areas of your brain respond. Then, they knock you unconscious to further test your brain activity. 

Hours afterwards, you’re sitting in your quarters, waiting for the list of final candidates. You were the last one to be tested, so if you’re selected, you’ll be the last one to spar with Steve. After weeks of being inactive, you can’t say you’re not looking forward to it. (In fact, you’re really hoping for a chance to punch him in the face.)

Your personal computer dings with an incoming video call. When you accept, Fury is looming over you, his face projected on the wall. “Congrats. You’re sparring with Rogers tomorrow at 0800. Just like I told you before.” With that single, incredibly terse message, he hangs up. You let out a huge breath. You were kind of hoping he would call with bad news—knowing that you and Steve have basic compatibility makes the potential for failure so much worse. 

At 0750 the next morning, you leave your quarters to head to Combat. You’ve stretched, and you meditated for so long that you’re in a state of blank alertness rather than the anxiety that might compromise you in a fight.

As you step through the doors, rows of defeated candidates, permitted to stay and watch the trials, burst into half-hearted applause. From what you can see, Steve has just soundly beaten his last opponent, whose staff is across the room from where he’s lying, prone. 

You can tell from the bruises that some of the candidates sport that no one has established themselves as a contender yet. Combat-based compatibility tests aren’t a fight; they’re a conversation, a dance of sorts. Ideally, both partners are highly skilled and evenly matched, enough so that they can anticipate each other’s moves. That these potential pilots (many of them, to your eyes, fresh out of school) don’t know how to counterattack or to avoid getting hurt means there’s no way they’ll be allowed to pilot Triumph. You feel heartened by this information. 

“Next candidate, please.” Fury doesn’t yell, but his voice carries nonetheless. You take a deep, calming breath, remove your socks and shoes, and catch the staff that he tosses to you. 

You take your place on the mat and move into your sparring position. Steve does the same, and you’re surprised to note that while his face is a mask of indifference, there’s a hint of challenge and excitement in his eyes. 

Both of you are experienced, unlike some of the newbies in the room, and have had years to develop unique styles of combat. Sara once told you that you were fluid and elegant, like water. You’ve spent enough years watching Steve spar to know that he’s an incredibly fast, clever fighter. Strong, too, but over the years too many people have made the mistake of assuming that Steve will choose brute force over a brilliant counterattack for you to do the same. 

There’s no starting bell to the match, just you and Steve moving closer to each other, like magnets. Once you get close enough to strike, you bring your staff down in a brutal overhand—and he blocks it effortlessly. You exchange a flurry of strikes and counterstrikes, testing each other, until you leave your left side exposed and he stops his staff inches from your midsection. 

“Point,” Fury calls. 

Five seconds later, Steve accidentally leaves an opening in his guard and you slash your staff towards his chest. 

“Point,” Fury calls again. 

After that, both of you fall into what can only be described as an effortless rhythm. You know Steve; you spent years with him at the Jaeger Academy training to be pilots, and even if his style has changed, he hasn’t. 

Every time he attacks, you counter it, and vice versa. You speed up, moving faster and faster till your staves are blurring in the air, and yet no one manages to land a hit. You’re precisely evenly matched. Perfect complements to each other. 

You laugh, unable to contain your joy at the fight. The only other time you’ve felt this connected—this in sync with someone else—was during a drift. 

_Oh_. You barely have time to think it to yourself before Steve’s staff is at your throat. Then you respond, and Fury barely has enough time to say, “Point,” before you swipe at Steve’s legs, locking one of them in between your arm and your staff in order to bring him to the ground. 

The rejected candidates burst into vigorous applause. You roll off of Steve, looking at Fury expectantly. 

He turns to Steve. “She the one?” 

He glances at you, and there’s a certainty in his expression, making you feel something that’s not quite queasiness. Something has just changed between you two, but you’re not sure what. “Yeah. She’s the one.” 

**

It’s a practice run, just a jaunt around Anchorage to get a feel for things, but you’ve forgotten what it’s like to have a person in your head. And Steve—it’s different, having _him_ in your head. Exhilarating, like standing outside in a thunderstorm. You stop knowing where you end and he begins. 

In a second, everything you’d ever thought about one another is laid bare, and what he thinks about you—well, it isn’t what you expected at all. In the silence of the drift, you let it rush by. There’s no space for you to doubt each other, there. 

When you come out of the drift for the first time, you don’t quite know how to handle it. Steve walks you back to your quarters, afterwards. You jolt out of your thoughts when he stops outside the door to your rooms. Suddenly he’s turned towards you, his body inches away from yours. 

He tucks a piece of hair behind your ear and you lean in, unable to stop yourself. He kisses you gently, then, the weight of everything you’ve just shared with one another in the drift making it tender, unhurried. 

His hands come to rest against your hips. You kiss him until you run out of air, until you’re looking up at him breathlessly. 

“Come in?” you ask him. His eyes are a dark, dark blue, and his voice is gravelly when he agrees.

In the middle of the night, you wake up wrapped in him, safer than you’ve felt in years of sleeping alone; his body is warm against your back, his arm a comforting weight across your body. 

Fingers trace the dip of your waist, and you realize Steve is awake too. The darkness gives everything a dreamy quality, like time has no meaning. It’s just you and your copilot, breathing together in the dark. In, out. 

“Our hearts are beating together, you know,” Steve says against the curve of your ear. “I can feel it.” Somehow, you know he’s smiling. 

Yours skips a beat in wonder. “Did you know?”

“That it was going to be like this? No.” He’s rubbing his thumb in tiny circles against your hip. “It’s not like I ever did this with Rumlow.” 

You let out a tiny laugh. “I can’t believe I was so wrong about us. It seems so silly now.”

“No regrets?” For the first time, he sounds anxious. 

You turn to face him, fingers smoothing over high cheekbones and memorizing the planes of his face. “Of course not, Steve Rogers. I know you. I’ve even been inside your head. How on earth could I ever have any regrets?”


	2. defenses up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the week of short updates but i'm glad i get to take this out of my one shots collection!! be prepared for Fluff and a little angst rumbling on the horizon--i'm not sure how far i'm going to take this work but it's going to be short and sweet probably

It might just be friendship. And sex. Or what’s developed between you and Steve in the past few months might be more than just the closeness of the drift.

(You’re not really sure you can tell.)

You’re in the lounge patching up some light scratches from your last mission. Natasha Romanoff, one of the pilots of Black Athena, is taking long swigs of an ice-cold beer and occasionally bandaging wounds in places that you can’t reach. 

“Can you get my back? It’s all screwed up—a piece of glass paneling shattered.” 

“That new glass? That they said was shock-proof?” She moves to sit behind you on the couch and begins to squeeze antibiotic cream onto your cuts, taping dressings onto them with consummate skill. 

“Yeah. Got body-slammed by a Category III Kaiju near Kodiak and it just burst.” Your eyes are closed, and you let out a hiss from in between clenched teeth as she gently picks out a thin glass sliver from your wound. 

“Guess that’s what we get for trying to cut costs. Anything Hammer makes is guaranteed to break within minutes,” she says, sounding mildly exasperated. 

Natasha finishes dressing your injuries and starts braiding your hair, as if she needs something to occupy her hands. The feeling relaxes you, and some of the post-battle tenseness bleeds out of your posture. You sit in comfortable silence for a few seconds, enjoying the sensation.

“Nat? I have kind of a personal question to ask you.” Your tone is understandably tentative—she’s ex-Special Forces or some kind of secret service (your money is on KGB) and notorious for keeping her personal life private with force, if necessary. But she’s let you in closer than most, so your voice only wobbles a little bit. 

“Go for it.” Natasha sounds wary, and you feel slightly bad for prying. 

“Are you and Clint…together?” 

She exhales a long sigh and secures your braid with an elastic while she answers. “Romantically? Physically?” 

“Either? Both?”

There’s a pause, as if she’s trying to decide whether to lie or to tell you the truth. “Both. We’re dating,” she says, quietly. 

“Oh.” You give her a silly grin. “And all this time I thought you were just sneaking into the training room after hours to have sex.” 

Your attempt at levity makes Natasha crack a tiny smile. You catch her gaze, suddenly serious. “That’s great, Nat. I’m happy for you.” 

Reassured that no judgment is coming, she recovers her composure. “I assume there’s a reason why you’re asking?” she questions, eyes dancing as if she knows exactly why you brought it up. 

It’s your turn to be embarrassed. You stare down at her beer, now lukewarm and resting on the coffee table, as if doing so will give you clarity. “How did you know that your feelings for Barton weren’t just because of the drift?” 

She looks at you thoughtfully. “Did Fury ever tell you about his old partner?”

Taking your silence as a negative, Natasha continues. “He and Pierce couldn’t stand each other. They had to be put in separate rooms for mission briefings because they refused to speak to one another outside of a fight. But they drifted together for nearly five years before Pierce was busted for selling the Corps’ proprietary Jaeger tech on the black market.” 

She picks up her beer and takes a long sip. “Moral of the story is, you don’t like someone just because the drift puts you in their brain. Sure, it accelerates the process of getting to know one another, but if you hadn’t liked what you’d seen in Steve’s mind, would you even be asking me these questions in the first place?” 

You mull it over, saying nothing. Nat, mercifully, takes pity on you and turns the TV on—she likes documentaries—and you let the noise wash over you, stopping you from thinking. 

You wake slowly, blink the sleep out of your eyes, and attempt to make sense of the blurry world around you. The lights are off, and the lounge is lit only by the glow of the television. Nat’s documentary is still playing, though the sound is turned way down. The other woman is sprawled out on the recliner, eyes half-lidded, dozing or as close to it as she ever gets. 

And Steve is leaning against the doorframe, an unfathomable look in his eyes. “Thought I was going to have to carry you to bed,” he says softly. 

_I wouldn’t mind if you carried me,_ you want to say. But it feels too—intimate isn’t the right word, really, because you share so much with him already. It feels too romantic. Like you might be stepping over a very thin line into things unknown. 

“How long have you been standing there?” you say instead, your voice scratchy. 

“I just got done in medical,” Steve responds, “Wanted to see how you were doing, and Sam told me that you and Natasha were having girl time in the lounge.” 

He moves into the room and in the dim light, you notice the bruises that line his arms. He’s black and purple and blue under a loose white cotton t-shirt, the mottled skin only interrupted by the bandage wrapped around one of his wrists. 

“I’m okay. Are you?” You can’t stop yourself from leaving the couch to step closer to Steve and gently take his bandaged hand in both of yours. You turn it over so his palm is facing upwards, examining the dressing, tracing it lightly with your fingertips. 

“I think I’ll survive,” he says into the silence a few seconds after you stop. 

His hand is still in your grasp, and you’ve moved inexorably closer. You look up at him, and he’s looking steadily, evenly back at you. You’ve kissed this man, slept beside him—but you see something in his patient gaze that you don’t understand. 

So you drop his hand and leave, making your way past him to a lonely bed. 

(Later, after you’ve tossed and turned for hours, kept from a deep sleep by the screams of dead civilians, you give up. Steve opens the door when you knock. Neither of you say anything, even when you shrug off your blanket from around your shoulders and nestle into his dark blue sheets.)


End file.
